


Visions

by GrantairetheCynical (Rebel_Atar)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-17 23:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7290652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebel_Atar/pseuds/GrantairetheCynical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire begins to get visions of a future that awaits him and his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Night

They started vague, in the middle of the night.

The smell of blood and gunpowder.

The subtle yet terrifying sound of creaking and splintering wood.

The deafening horror of cannon fire.

He woke panting, drenched in his own sweat and could not shake the dread that had seeped into his bones

The city was full of ghosts.

Laughter here, a gun shot there, the sound of weeping.

It was like walking through a dream, half formed figments and echoing voices and just out of the corner always this overbearing shape beginning to rise up, being built higher and higher, he could swear there was even a flag. It showed up sprawling across streets.

He felt sick.

Something felt wrong, seriously wrong.

He felt hollow…he felt fear. It did not feel his own, yet at the same time, it felt like it could be no one else’s.He was in the middle of the street, broad daylight, when he saw the first of them.

 

Bahorel.

 

The man had more bayonets in him than he had thought possible for one man to live through and yet he was still going down fighting, tooth and nail.

 

He just stared, horror struck as the populus walked through this figment of his friend. Stared as he died, frozen in place. Stared as he watched blood he knew could not possibly be there stain red the cobbles.He couldn’t take it. He just could not handle this. The images, the waking dreams or visions, the flashes or premonitions, he could not handle any of them. His hands felt slick with blood.

 

He needed to forget.

 

He needed to drink.

 

He went to the Musain….and walked into another world.

 

It was a meeting that much he could see.

Enjolras….Enjolras was filled with revolutionary fire. He was glorious, he was…oh…not very impressed with this other Grantaire, this other self. He was mocking Enjolras right back, drinking in defiance. Drinking for want of some attention, some reaction, drinking to numb the pain of none.

Then there was Marius and he and Joly were teasing him something terrible about some such thing.

 

Marius spoke of Cosette, of love and light. Grantaire joined in with sarcasm, mocking Marius’ love but only to hide how true the words were to his own heart.

 

Enjolras cared about neither of them, about only revolution. Then…

 

_ What.. _

 

La Marque was dead?

 

La Marque was dead.

 

La Marque was dead and their revolution would begin on his funeral procession. Where was the planning in that, where was the sense, why had they all seemed to have gone mad.

 

Unable to bear the sight of his own heart wrenching looks at Enjolras, the blond’s obliviousness all that was returned, unable to watch his friend’s plan their martyrdom, he fled once more.He sat on his window ledge and watched.

Watched himself gaze at Enjolras with awe and despair. He felt a tear roll down his cheek.

He watched himself join his friends in reminiscing, watched as he turned it to bitter sadness at what seemed to be a lost cause, watched as he spat words filled with anger and shattered hope and loss at Apollo and flee inside.

 

He turned to see himself enter collapse at a table that wasn’t there, and pick up the bottle.

 

Bottle after bottle after bottle.

 

Until he could hardly stay seated in his chair.

 

Until he was slumped over the table, passed out drunk, no hope of waking.


	2. Horror Upon Horror

His dreams the second night were much less vague, but no less horrifying.

 

He saw his friends laid out in rows.

 

He saw the sights to accompany the previous night’s sounds and smells. Gunfire and injured and dead littering the streets, there was the gunpowder, there was the blood. Barricades being ripped apart by cannon balls. Decimated so quickly. They never stood a chance against something like that.

 

He saw his friends take shelter inside the cafe. Stairs broken, bottles shattered to provide some sort of defence. Desperate scrambling to reach the upper levels.

 

As the national guard almost casually broke down the door.

 

He awoke shaking and silent. A deadness in his chest.

 

He wept.


	3. No Better By Daylight

He had been too busy in the commotion.

To concerned with stopping his friends from getting hurt.

Too busy frantically watching Enjolras so he didn’t get himself killed, and then Jehan was gone.

 

“Vive la france! Vive l’avenir!”

 

Then he heard the gunshot.

  
  


He snapped awake from the stupor he had been lost in, felt the dread fill his body with ice, and continued on closer toward the Musain.

 

His answers would be there, he knew it. He had been wandering the streets, the day’s happenings only furthering on the feeling of wrongness within him.

He drifted past the Corinth only to be plunged into a further vision.

 

He saw Joly, and Bossuet.

He heard Joly’s cold blocked voice, heard himself tease his friend.

Heard a lengthy and bitter rant, drifting from topic to topic, almost poetic in places.

He heard the bitterness in his voice, the disgust, the mention at being preyed upon made him wince. He had been doing so much better recently, what had sent him spiralling back this far.

 

There was a mention of Enjolras, of him only sending for Bossuet and sadness and disappointment filled him. When was this from that things had gone on this long, that he had gone back to such bitterness.

 

By the time he had reached the outside of the Musain he could see it, a barricade at once both whole and blown apart, cannon fire having done its job

Then he saw Gavroche.

 

No.

 

Please no.

 

The boy scampered around, singing and taunting an enemy invisible to Grantaire’s eyes.

Then he was shot.

 

Twice.

 

He felt his stomach turn to lead. Who shot an innocent child. Who could be so heartless.

He felt another tear fall but by now he was practically numb to it. He looked up at the Musain and knew.


	4. Pylades Drunk

He climbed the stairs slowly, dreading what he would see.

Yet when he reached the upper level there was nothing, it was empty ordinary. He turned to go into the back room and that was where the difference began to take shape.

 

He saw himself slumped over a table, dead drunk, but not yet dead. There was a commotion outside, shouting and gunfire, then silence.

 

He watched himself stir, awoken by the silence not the noise, and stagger to open the door. The outside was now swarming with national guard. He took a step back, expecting his other self to do the same, instead he moved forward.

 

Grantaire followed in confusion.

 

What was he doing, he was going to get himself killed, what could he possibly be thinking he needed to get out he needed to find-

 

Oh.

 

Now further into the room he saw the reason. The bodies of his friends littered the floor.

 

There was Joly and Courfeyrac and Combeferre. There were a dozen other students that followed their leader, that followed Enjolras. He heard his own gasp and looked up.

 

He had never wished so badly to be blind in all his years.

 

There, standing against the back wall, was Enjolras.

He was blood spattered, dirty, and exhausted. He was glorious, and he was facing down a firing squad.

 

No.

Please dear gods no.

Not him.

Please not him.

 

He saw the rifles raise and watched himself stagger forward blindly.

 

“Long live the republic”

 

What.

 

“I am one of them”

 

Oh gods.

 

He watched, tears already streaming, as this figment of himself stood beside Enjolras. As he looked at his Apollo with fear and admiration.

 

“Permets tu?”

 

To the disbelief of his eyes, Enjolras smiled. It was a heavy smile, filled with words unsaid and things Grantaire wished desperately to understand. What did it mean, that look, that smile.

Then Enjolras took his hand, and together they turned to face the guard.

There was no fear on his face, not even resignation.

There was acceptance, peace and above all completion.

In that moment he looked finally to be whole.

 

Then the shots were fired.

His Apollo pinned to the wall by eight bullets, while he the follower fell to his knees to lay at his feet, hands still clasped tight.

 

He felt sick.

 

The vision faded and he sobbed, walking over to place a hand against the offending wall, before collapsing to the floor in front of it.

 

His heart felt shredded, his soul empty.


End file.
